This invention relates to configuration of virtual appliances in a virtual machine operating in a virtual computing environment. More specifically, the invention relates to isolating the activation and configuration scripts, and their associated functionality, to enable post-install configuration of a virtual appliance.
A virtual machine is a self contained operating environment that behaves as if it is a separate computer, while allowing the sharing of underlying physical machine resources between multiple virtual machines. Each virtual machine operates as a whole machine, while a host of the virtual machine(s) manages resources to support each virtual machine. For example, a virtual machine consists of CPUs, memory, and I/O slots that are a subset of a pool of available resources within a computer system. Each of the virtual machines within the computer system is capable of running a version of an operating system or a specific set of application workloads.
A virtual appliance is a virtual machine image file that includes a pre-configured operating system and a single application. It is packaged as a pre-installed system image for a particular virtualized environment and hardware platform. A common file format for the virtual appliance is the open virtualization format (OVF). In one embodiment, an OVF package may include multiple virtual appliances, with an appliance have one or more applications. Deploying a new virtual appliance requires copying the appliance image, including the operating system and application, to a pre-installed and pre-configured virtual machine. Accordingly, the virtual appliance is a software image containing an application designed to run inside a virtual machine.